Today we had a rehearsal for our Christmas Concert. Holly and Hannah, Korean twins in Year 6, got up and played a traditional Korean song Yung Ga. They played the song on traditional Korean instruments called ocharandas???. The girls have a single, the brown coloured one, and a double ocharandas???.Instantly I recognised the tune. Pokarekare Ana. They assured me it's traditional Korean. I assured them it was Maori. I down loaded the ad that used to be on TV. Listen to both and compare. For me suddenly the world just got smaller. We're global citizens, the same but different.
NZ version, slower but same tune I'm sure. To my Kiwi ears its the same
Korean Yung Ga
4 comments:
You are right. Amazing but music has become pretty international. Well done girls.
Well I'll be blowed. I played the girls tune aloud on the laptop and called out to the family if they could name the tune. They all called out Pokarekare Ana and were completely surprised when I showed them the video clip. How amazing!
Wikipedia tells me that the music and words are attributed to Paraire Tomoana. (That has to be a Maori name.) The music was used as the theme song for the 2005 Korean film "Crying Fast". So it became a traditional Korean tune!
And to add to Izzy's comment:
Emanating in the North of Auckland 1914
The original 1914 Northland version was probably a verse beginnng Pokarekare ana ngā wai o Hoki-anga, and it was possibly set to a Dalmatian fiddler's dance tune.
A full explanation of the origin of Pokarekare Ana is given in a 1921 2nd edition of the booklet A Noble Sacrifice sold in aid of a Maori soldiers' fund.
It appears that Tomoana edited this 1921 booklet, even though the 1921 edition held at the National Library has lost its cover page naming the editors.
The National Library does have an earlier 1919 1st edition of this booklet which has the cover shown here, naming Pairare Tomoana as co-editor. (However this 1919 edition does not have Pokarekare Ana in it)
Narrowneck Camp was at Takapuna, Auckland. It seems Maori soldiers from different tribal areas met there and swapped songs.
They were there only after World War I had started in late 1914. And therefore the ditties would not have got to the East Coast until a year or so later.
Ngata and Tomoana note that the "present form" of the song was especially associated with 19th and 20th Maori Reinforcements, who were training at Narrowneck in May-June of 1917, so it would appear that the wai o Waiapu phrase was not added to the song until mid 1917.
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